Lars Hertervig (16 February 1830 – 6 January 1902) was a Norwegian painter. His semi-fantastical work with motives from the coastal landscape in the traditional district of

Ryfylke Ryfylke is a traditional district in the northeastern part of Rogaland county, Norway. The district is located northeast of the city of Stavanger and east of the city of Haugesund and it encompasses about 60% of the county's area. It includes ...

is regarded as one of the peaks of Norwegian painting.

Life and career

Lars Hertervig was born in 1830 at Borgøy, in the municipality

Tysvær Tysvær is a municipality in Rogaland county, Norway. It is part of the Haugalandet region. The municipality is located on the Haugalandet peninsula on the northern side of the Boknafjorden, just east of the towns of Kopervik and Haugesund. Th ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...

, on the west coast of Norway, north of Stavanger. His family were poor, Quaker farmers. Hertervig studied painting at the Arts Academy of Düsseldorf from 1852, as the private pupil of

Hans Gude Hans Fredrik Gude (March 13, 1825August 17, 1903) was a Norwegian romanticist painter and is considered along with Johan Christian Dahl to be one of Norway's foremost landscape painters. He has been called a mainstay of Norwegian National Roma ...

. He is associated with the

Düsseldorf school of painting The Düsseldorf school of painting is a term referring to a group of painters who taught or studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Academy (now the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf or Düsseldorf State ...

. In 1854, due to a cruel prank played by his fellow students, he experienced a temporary mental breakdown, and moved back to the Stavanger area. In October 1856, Hertervig entered Gaustad asylum. His last 30 years he struggled financially, and finally ended up at the poorhouse. He could not afford to paint with oil on canvas, and several works from this period are watercolors and gouache on paper not meant for painting, sometimes using bits of papers glued together with homemade rye flour paste. His artistic breakthrough was posthumous, coming at the

1914 Jubilee Exhibition The 1914 Jubilee Exhibition took place in Kristiania, Norway, from May 5 to October 11, 1914. It marked the centennial anniversary of the 1814 constitution and focused on industry and agriculture. The main location was the grounds of Frogner Manor ...

Kristiania Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...

(now Oslo), twelve years after his death in Stavanger.

Popular culture

Odd Kvaal Pedersen wrote ''Narren og hans mester'', a documentary about Lars Hertervig in 1987. Paal-Helge Haugen wrote ''Hertervig: Ein opera'' in 1995.

Jon Fosse Jon Olav Fosse (born 29 September 1959) is a Norwegian author and dramatist. Biography Jon Fosse was born in Haugesund, Norway. A serious accident at age seven brought him close to death; the experience significantly influenced his adulthood wr ...

created an homage to Hertervig with his 1995 novel '' Melancholia I'' and his 1996 sequel '' Melancholy II''. Fosse also wrote the libretto for ''Melancholia'', an opera adaptation by Georg Friedrich Haas, which premiered at the

Opera Garnier The Palais Garnier (, Garnier Palace), also known as Opéra Garnier (, Garnier Opera), is a 1,979-seatBeauvert 1996, p. 102. opera house at the Place de l'Opéra in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, France. It was built for the Paris Opera from ...

in Paris on 9 June 2008 on stage by Stanislas Nordey ( Laurence Olivier Award 2008 for a new opera) and costumes of Raoul Fernandez.''Georg Friedrich Haas - Melancholia '' (Universal Edition Aktiengesellschaft)
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Gallery

File:Hertervig Gamle furutrær.jpg, ''Old Pine Trees'', 1865 File:Lars Hertervig - Coastal Landscape - Google Art Project.jpg, ''Coastal Landscape'', 1855 File:Lars Hertervig - The Tarn - Google Art Project.jpg, ''The Tarn'', 1865 File:Lars Hertervig - Island Borgøya - Google Art Project.jpg, '' Borgøy Island'', 1867

References

Other sources

* Borgen, Trond (2005) ''Et indre eksil : et essay om Lars Hertervigs papirarbeider'' (Wigestrand Forlags AS) * Fosse, Jon (1995) ''Melancholia I-II'' (Det Norske Samlaget) * Koefoed, Holger (1984) ''Lars Hertervig : lysets maler'' (Gyldendal Norsk Forlag) * Koefoed, Holger (1991) ''I Lars Hertervigs skog'' (Gyldendal Norsk Forlag) * Moe, Ole Henrik (1989) ''Lars Hertervig, en norsk malertragedie'' (Blønda)

External links